Name: Potato Rissoles
Ingredients: 2 cups mashed potatoes; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper or cayenne; ¼ cup minced parsley; 2 green onions or eschalots, minced; 2 egg yolks; Lard or butter for frying

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mash and season the potatoes with salt and white pepper or cayenne.
Mix in the minced parsley and green onions or eschalots.
Add enough egg yolks to bind the mixture.
Roll the mixture into small balls.

Fry

Fry the balls in lard or butter over moderate heat until cooked through.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,451 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes: Form the bulk of the rissole and give a soft, tender interior.
Egg yolks: Bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and flavour to the potato mixture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, parsley, onion, egg, butter):

Thymefits better
Capersfits better
Garlicfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, onion, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.